


The Lies We Tell Ourselves in the Dark

by ShitpostingfromtheBarricade



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: (I mean it could be ambiguous I Guess), (but I know what I did), 2020 same prompt fic challenge, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Don't copy to another site, Enjolras POV, M/M, Richard Siken-ass inspired bitch, Unrequited Love, and also because my last fic was suspiciously happy, but I wanted to explore that because Why Not, demi!enjolras, many sexual references but none explicit, same prompt fic challenge, same-prompt fic challenge, spfc, unhealthy as shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23983810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShitpostingfromtheBarricade/pseuds/ShitpostingfromtheBarricade
Summary: Enjolras had never wanted sex, never been moved by its intrigues; it bordered on grotesque, obscene, vulgar, and was impossible to imagine wanting for himself.He wants to consume Grantaire whole.Warnings:discussion of sex (not explicit), unhealthy emotions
Relationships: Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Comments: 27
Kudos: 87
Collections: 2020 Same-Prompt Fic Challenge





	The Lies We Tell Ourselves in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2020 Same-Prompt Fic Challenge! The quote was, "I didn't know you could do that."
> 
> One million thanks to [PieceOfCait](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PieceOfCait/pseuds/PieceOfCait) not only for beta-ing this but, more importantly, for holding my hand through the worst case of writer's block I have ever had the misfortune of encountering. No idea what I would do without her. <3

Courfeyrac had once informed him, “Love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s terrifying.

“No one will ever want to sleep with you.”

It had been met with a shove and a laugh, but evidently the words had burrowed themselves in Enjolras’s subconscious for the moment it finally hit him, the all-consuming force of whatever he feels for Grantaire.

Before Grantaire Enjolras had never wanted sex, never been moved by the intrigues of skin against clammy skin and intertwining tongues and the animalistic impulses of it all. It bordered on grotesque, obscene, vulgar, and was impossible to imagine wanting for himself.

He wants to consume Grantaire whole.

Enjolras has loved people before, but it has never felt like this: he loves Courfeyrac, he loves Combeferre, he loves Jehan and Bahorel and Feuilly and Joly and Bossuet, but he isn’t acutely aware of them the way he is Grantaire. He isn’t fine-tuned to immediately know when they’ve entered the building or remember their coffee order or calculate the meaning in the precise angle of their mouth as they scribble something on a napkin in the back of the Musain. At first he’d thought the sex would be enough, a piece of Grantaire no one else had, but Enjolras is insatiable, and now that he’s had Grantaire he wants nothing less than all of him.

It’s not practical, he’s perfectly aware—not even healthy, much less normal. He’s trained himself to draw a partition between his twin obsessions, but it’s a partition of fine mesh, fine enough to shudder under Grantaire’s stuttering breath when they do what they do under the cover of darkness, fine enough that Enjolras catches himself drafting hymns in his sleep that he’ll never deliver.

It’s okay though, really, because the partition does exist, and devotion can be an act of passion removed from full immersion. Enjolras has never known halfway measures before now, but this whole thing has been an exercise in growing accustomed to them. He’d handed over his body to see what could become of it under the sculptor's mindful touch, and now he knows _(oh,_ how he knows) and has grown selfish but careful—so so careful—not to ask for more. He’s burning and being consumed alive and it feels so right, and he has to stop somewhere.

It’s too late for that tonight, though, because tonight Grantaire had been flirting with the waitress.

It’s hardly out of the ordinary: Grantaire flirts like he breathes, flirts in every very intentional caress of his bottle and lingering glance and draw of his practiced tongue across red lips before a jeremiad. They’ve never talked about what this is between them; Enjolras attends a singular temple in earnest, but he’s never asked if Grantaire worships multiple gods, never expected him to narrow his religion down to a singular deity. He’s never wanted to risk making this more than it is,

but now he has, because tonight Grantaire has followed him home (as he’d asked, the world in a gesture) and is mouthing against Enjolras’s pulse, and bitterness is coursing through the blood pumping under the man’s clever bite, and Enjolras is pushing him back against the naked brick of the apartment’s stairwell and kissing him like he means it, devouring him and swallowing him up and taking everything he’s wanted until now.

“Feeling feisty, huh?” Grantaire laughs breathlessly as Enjolras nibbles at the newly exposed skin along the man’s neckline.

Tonight the feelings are right at the surface, stinging in their exposed rawness. Tonight Enjolras is fraying at the edges and his nerves are shot and he hasn’t slept in two nights and Grantaire is _his,_ and he responds by sucking what he hopes becomes a blistering, bruising hickey above Grantaire’s collarbone.

A guttural moan comes in response that settles somewhere low in Enjolras’s stomach, the man’s fingers running through Enjolras’s hair in a way that makes him want to pin Grantaire by the hips and never let him go. A nervous chuckle follows. “Woah there, Friend.”

“We are not just friends,” he growls into the hollow below Grantaire’s ear, “and you fucking know it.”

It’s a miscalculation: Grantaire freezes beneath him, hand slowly withdrawing from where it’d been knotted against Enjolras’s scalp. Breath still coming hard, Enjolras forces himself a reluctant few inches back.

“What,” begins the man cautiously, eyes searching Enjolras’s face, “do you think we are?”

This discussion wasn’t supposed to happen tonight, wasn’t supposed to happen ever. This was never meant to escalate past casual experimentation to the full-on obsession it has become. Shaking his head, Enjolras draws near again. “Forget it.”

“No,” Grantaire says, pressing Enjolras away and taking a backwards step toward the door. “What do you think we’re doing?”

They’re fucking. That’s all this has ever been in theory, only Enjolras’s brain has clung desperately to that and created crooks and crannies where there are none and a home in whatever it is that they’re doing. 

Which is fucking. 

“We’re going to my flat.”

“You know what I mean.” Grantaire’s eyes drop to Enjolras’s feet, seeming to measure him in a new light. “What is this to you?”

It’s color and light and texture and dimension in a life that had been previously defined in flat planes and structures. It’s feelings that Enjolras can’t parse and doesn’t know what to do with and heat and fire and everything. “Tell me you love me,” he says suddenly in a desperate, single breath.

Taking a step back, Grantaire’s head shakes slowly as his eyebrows furrow. “I...I don’t—”

“Tell me you love me,” he repeats, panic rising. 

“Is—you love me? Is that it?” 

Enjolras swallows.

“I didn’t—” Looking at the floor, Grantaire shakes his head again before admitting, “I didn’t know you could do that. I thought you were—I didn’t know you could.” 

_He never thought that Enjolras could love._ The meaning comes across loudly and clearly without being given voice, and it hollows something in his core. “It doesn’t have to matter. We can keep—we can keep doing this.” 

The other man is still shaking his head. “No, I. I think we should stop. I don’t think we should—” Pausing, he looks Enjolras up and down again before shrugging and turning his attention to something over Enjolras’s shoulder. “I don’t feel the same. I don’t love you.”

And just like that, the door is shutting, and a painful lump is forming in Enjolras’s throat as he stands exposed at the stairwell. He tells himself that Grantaire had to have known, that there’s no way he could not have known, but memory after memory comes crushing down on him, ripping his breath from his lungs as he recalls every pause and hesitation and deliberate separation, and no, 

it was all in his head.

**Author's Note:**

> I started a ch 2 from Grantaire's PoV but hated my first several stabs at it, so I've put it down for now. If there's interest, though, I may return to it.
> 
> If you enjoyed this, please let me know here or reach out to my at my [tumblr](http://shitpostingfromthebarricade.tumblr.com)!!


End file.
